maxiewawa The personal blog of maxiewawa

Just Voted

It feels good to vote, especially after living in a country where politicians aren't answerable to anyone!

Fixing an iPod

Firstly, just to let everyone know, this post isn't related to language or translation. I just hope someone who had the same problem as me comes across this post and finds the solution.

The Accident

Once I was walking down the street near Central listening to my 3rd Generation iPod. It fell out of my hand and hit the ground. It stopped playing, and wouldn't load up. In short, it froze. I had previously taken off the metal cover to change the battery (incidentally I broke the screen and made a YouTube video about how I did it so that you don't do it too), so whipped the cover off again. I disconnected the battery and then reconnected it again, assuming that it would be like turning it off then on again. Unfortunately it didn't restart, again.

The Symptoms

Instead of turning on, the iPod just showed a sick graphic. It wouldn't play, plugging it into my computer wouldn't do anything, it was totally unresponsive.

The Cure

For a while I was resigned to the fact that it was broken, never to be used again. I kept it around because I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. It was my first iPod, and I must have listened to it for thousands of hours... most of my Japanese and Korean vocab first entered my brain via my ears from it.

I don't know why, but I had a look around on Google on ways of fixing sick iPods. One site suggested I just open the thing, disconnect the battery, and then connect it to my computer again. That didn't work, so I pulled out the hard drive, put it back, connected the battery again, and hey presto! It was working again!

So give it a go if your iPod is broken. I'm not sure what I did to fix it, if it was disconnecting the battery, pulling out the hard drive, or a combination, but it's working again and I'm happy. It's not quite like having a new iPod (it's quite old and battered up) but it's the next best thing.

成语/Chinese Idioms

I just hate Chinese 成语. These are four character idioms that are a feature of the Chinese language. No, I take that back actually, a lot of them are used in Japanese, but are called something different 「四字熟語」.

The infuriating part is that they are used so differently to English idioms. It seems to me that English idioms are just "picked up", where Chinese idioms have to be studied laboriously. English idioms seem to come from everyday vocab, where Chinese idioms sometimes feature words and readings that no one uses any more, outside that one specific circumstance.

Anyway, just taking time out from memorising pages of these bloody things to moan a bit about it.

Mood: Back to work!!!

买单！！

跟华人去吃饭的时候经常发生很尴尬的事 － 结帐。在我们这里的话，最常见的是AA制，就是说把总计除以人数，每个人付的是一样，公平多吧。可是华人习惯一个人请客。最近我跟三个人一起吃饭，一共四个人，可不是AA制，反而是一个人付我们四个人的费。 我其实觉得是太过分，我跟爱香愿意付一半，可是没办法。而且他上次也请了我一次课。这个人请了我一次，我今天还想今天请他。可他不听！ 我今天说了：下次我请你。可是我相信，下次还会老样子。我真的想请他，但他怎么总不愿意？我不付的话，是对我有一点耻辱

Far From Perfection

Here's the really hard thing about translating. I'm trying to turn this into English:

我终于发现昆明城市管理者队员的武功其实远未到炉火纯青的地步

This is the most accurate I can get it:

I finally saw that the martial arts of Kunming's City Inspectors are actually at a level far from forged-in-the-fire perfection.

But that's a little cumbersome isn't it? Maybe I can clean it up a bit.

I finally saw how far the kungfu skills of Kunming's Chengguan are from perfection

The second sounds and reads better, but is differs a little from the original. I've translated 武功 as "Kungfu" which isn't correct, but is shorter, and slicker than "Martial Arts" which would be correct. I've also taken out some words so that it flows more (noticeably the four character Chengyu which doesn't translate well anyway). This might not seem a big deal in the short sentence above, but makes a big difference when reading an entire article.

So I'm always in a quandry. The first translation preserves the meaning of each word, but the flow of the Chinese is lost; the second one takes out words but doesn't sound as awkward. 

*shrugs* What would you do?

Walking Behind/Walking In Front

How would you translate this?

看到走在前面的女儿隆玉凤不高兴了，走在后面的隆宗药小声地安慰道:

Perhaps:

Looking at his annoyed daughter walking in front of him, Zong Longjiang, walking behind her, comforted her quietly, saying:

But isn't that a little stupid? If his daughter is walking in front of him, obviously he's walking behind her, right? How about this:

Looking at his annoyed daughter walking in front of him, Zong Longjiang comforted her quietly, saying:

Better right? But the redundant phrase 走在后面的/walking behind  is in fact in the original. It sounds just as awkward in Chinese too. So what's a translator to do? Seriously, should I fix things I think are wrong or awkward when I'm writing the translation? Or leave them?

Ashfield

We've moved! Aika and I now live in Ashfield.

Ashfield is one of the most multicultural areas of Sydney. It's like being back in Shanghai! About 80% of the shops here are run by Mandarin speaking Chinese, and about 90% of THOSE are run by Shanghainese! So I still get the opportunity to speak a few words of Shanghainese whenever I go into a shop.

Last Teaching Prac!

This afternoon I finished the final teaching practical of my CELTA course. All I have to do is turn up until the end of the week and I'll be a certified Teacher of English Language to Adults.

I'm not sure how I feel... I'm relieved that it's over, but intend to find a job doing exactly the same thing so it's not as if it's all over. And it's not like I didn't enjoy teaching too. It was just the assessment and the little piece of paper that I'd receive after each practical, grading and judging everything I did, that was so stressful.

Anyway, expect to hear more from me!

Asian Enclaves in Sydney

Aika and I were in Chatswood, a suburb of northern Sydney today. Aika noticed that there were a lot of Korean being spoken.

"Is this Korea town?" she asked.

"Well... yeah I guess."

"But how about Strathfield?"

"Well, yeah... Strathfield is the main Korea town, but I guess Chatswood is another Korea town."

"And Ashfield?"

"Well... there are some Korean shops there but I think Ashfield is more of a Chinatown."

"I thought Chinatown was in the city."

"Well, yes... the place called "Chinatown" is in the city, but Ashfield is a place with a lot of Chinese shops... I guess if you wanted to be specific, Ashfield is Shanghai-town, and Chinatown is Chinatown."

I think it's great that we have these little language isolates in Sydney, and that we don't just have one Koreatown but several. Unfortunately some idiots think that this is a bad thing, and have formed an anti immigration party, but I am sure that they will go the same way as all of our other anti immigration parties, and fade away when everyone realises how stupid they are.